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“Oh Gregory,” Melissa mimics Janine as she sidles up against the wall next to you, “I am so proud of you.” Her dreamy sigh and terrible impression of your coworker has you stifling a laugh behind your hand.
You struggle to keep your face straight but you join in on her antics. “Thank you, Janine. I’m proud of you,” you enunciate clearly and rhythmically like Mr. Educator of the Year. “My heart is so full of love even though my pockets are full of lint.” You jerk your arms in a stiff replication of a robot and Melissa’s eyes light up.
She slides an arm around your waist and looks at you with wide eyes. “Oh Gregory,” she flutters her eyelashes, “our love is so pure.” A wink is your only warning before Melissa leans in, clasps a hand over your mouth, and dramatically acts out kissing you in the middle of the hallway.
She’s laughing when she pulls away and her smile is infectious. “They’ll get their acts together soon, right? All the will-they-won’t-they nonsense is getting old.” Melissa’s hand falls to the small of your back as she walks with you back to your classroom.
Ignoring the butterflies in your stomach at the woman’s touch, you hum. “Definitely. They’re my Abbott OTP, for sure,” you agree.
Melissa looks at you as if you grew a second head and stops walking. “Over the phone…?”
“No,” you giggle, stopping with her, “it just means I like them together.”
She hesitantly accepts your explanation and shrugs. “Oh, well me too. Which one of those nincompoops do you think will make the first move?”
You turn the corner, narrowly avoiding Mr. Johnson and his trash can. “I don’t know. Gregory is too scared of rejection and Janine only picks partners that she doesn’t have to be emotionally vulnerable with.”
“Wow,” Melissa looks at you in quiet admiration. “You’ve really thought about this, huh?”
Your cheeks heat up and turn pink. “I just love love, what can I say?” As you approach your classroom, you slow your steps, wanting more time to talk.
Melissa leans in, her head close to yours. “You know we could always…push them together.” She mimes…you aren’t sure what with her hands.
“It is cuffing season.” It might not be a bad idea to give them a little nudge so they can spend the holiday season together.
Melissa nods enthusiastically. “I’ve got some cuffs we can use.”
Your jaw drops open momentarily and you blink, trying to control your thoughts. “That’s not…what if I talk to Gregory and you talk to Janine and we’ll see where everyone’s head is at?”
She smiles and squeezes your arm before turning towards her own classroom. “Meet back here tomorrow?” Melissa calls over her shoulder with a wave goodbye.
At the end of the day, you’re picking up your classroom when you hear a knock on the open door. “Hey, how’d it go?” You ask with a smile when you see Melissa sauntering in, her hands in her pants pockets.
She plops herself into your desk chair like she owns it and sighs heavily. “Janine is in complete denial. One word about Gregory and she shut me out like the Flyers did the Bruins last week,” Melissa throws her hands up in annoyance. “All she wanted to talk about was how great you are. If I didn’t know any better I’d say she has a crush on you instead,” she jokes.
“Me and Janine?” You laugh. “She’s nice but neither of us would be able to open the pickle jar.” With the last bit of the classroom tidied up, you approach Melissa and sit at the edge of your desk. “Gregory knows he has the hots for her but he doesn’t think he has a shot. He feels friendzoned, I guess.” Your conversation with him hadn’t gone much better than Melissa and Janine’s. It took a lot of effort and cornering on your part, but you got the job done. Schemmentis are the only ones capable of…persuasion.
“At this rate, they’ll both be retired by the time they figure it out,” Melissa snorts. How oblivious could two people really be? You knew your best friend was dense, but wow. Melissa is right.
“Guess it’s up to us then?”
Melissa nods with a grin. “We’re gonna have to think of a bigger plan.”
The bell rings and Melissa stands to leave. “Come back here for lunch tomorrow so we can talk it over. And bring a good idea!” She squeezes your hand in goodbye.
“Hey hon,” Melissa greets you with a smile and shoves a container of food into your hands. “I had extra,” she explains when she sees your confusion.
Not one to say no to free food, you happily take a seat and dig in. “I asked Barb what she thought,” Melissa mentions, “and she said we should leave it be and not interfere with ‘God's plan’.” She curls her fingers in air quotes. “And I said ‘well what about our plan? Who says god’s is better?’ Then she asked what our plan was and I had to tell her we don’t have one yet.”
You nod around a bite of food and open a drawer of your desk, rummaging around until you find what you’re looking for. A binder full of a typed report is placed in front of Melissa for her to view. You had stayed up, detailing all the information you have so far and lists of both Gregory and Janine’s likes and dislikes.
Melissa flips through some of the pages, careful not to get any red sauce on the paper. “Wow. This is…really detailed. You’ve got a Plan with a capital P and I didn’t even bring a ‘pla’,” she jokes.
“At least one of us came prepared. Love shall prevail and all that,” you shrug. If it takes a carefully constructed binder of information for two good people to realize they’re perfect for each other, so be it. Now that you think about it, it makes a lot of sense that Gregory is your best friend. Maybe he has a binder of all the things he likes about Janine.
“You’re cute,” Melissa nudges you playfully. “But I think we should just lock them in a closet and call it good.” She digs her phone out of her pocket. “I have a guy that could completely seal them in and install cameras so we could see what’s going on.”
“No!” You stop her typing by covering her hand with your own. “I do not want to see Janine and Gregory play seven minutes in heaven. And we might push them apart with something so…intense.” They’re sensitive people and doing too much would scare them off.
Melissa nods in agreement and sets her phone down. “Okay, what if we trick them into going on a date together somehow?” A drop of pasta sauce drips from her fork and onto your desk and she sheepishly wipes it off with her sleeve before you can stop her.
Shaking your head, you consider her idea. “We could ask them to come out with us and ditch them at the last second.” Neither of your oblivious friends would ask the other to hang out, but they wouldn’t turn it down if an opportunity was presented. It’s foolproof, really.
Behind the claw machine in the movie theater’s arcade is your chosen hideout spot, you and Melissa taking turns peaking out to check if Janine and Gregory have spotted each other yet. Once it’s clear that they’ve seen each other and start talking, both you and Melissa send texts saying something came up and you wouldn’t be able to meet them.
You watch as they both decide to stay and get in line for tickets. Melissa whoops beside you and your friends look your way. Before they can see you, you duck down and pull Melissa with you. She has to stifle your giggles with her hand as you both fall onto the floor.
By the time you calm down, Janine and Gregory are no longer in view, presumably finding their seats already. “We’ve got a few minutes to kill, want to play?” Melissa jerks her head towards the machine and reaches into her pocket for some quarters.
She allows you to go first. The claw machine is filled with stuffed animals and cartoon characters. In the corner under a Strawberry Shortcake, you see it. A Perry the Platypus. You take the joystick in your hand and carefully, precisely, maneuver the claw over him. Melisa watches as you hit the red button and the claw lowers, clamping over Perry’s snout and carrying him towards the front of the machine before he falls to his fate, narrowly missing the drop box.
Perry had been so close to being free, but you failed him. “Here,” Melissa guides you a few steps from the machine and takes your place. “Let me try. It’s the…blue beaver, right?” She wiggles her fingers in the direction of the greatest spy of all time.
“Melissa Schemmenti, do you not know who Perry the Platypus is?”
She turns back to the machine with a blush and starts the game. “Those aren’t fake like unicorns?” Melissa expertly works the joystick to bring the claw right above Perry and pushes the button to lower it.
You watch intently as the claw drops and grabs onto the stuffed animal. “No they live in Australia which is close enough though. Did you know they don’t have teeth so they use gravel to chew their food?” Every fact you know about them does make them seem unrealistic, so she has a point.
Perry falls into the box and Melissa squats down to get him from it. “Oh are they the ones that make the goo from their butts that goes in imitation vanilla?” She stands back up, knees cracking and holds out the prize.
“I think that’s beavers, Mel.” You smile at the sweet gesture. “Oh he’s so cute, let me take a picture!” Melissa holds him as you snap a picture, making sure her face isn’t in it so your cover isn’t blown, and post it to your Instagram story. How adorable.
“Ready to go?” Melissa holds out her elbow for you to take and leads you to the correctly labeled theater, slipping into the back row under the shroud of darkness. The seats you choose have the perfect view of Janine and Gregory.
Melissa whispers to you in her Janine voice as she watches her cuddle up to Gregory. “Oh Gregory, if only I had a big strong man to warm me up.”
You clear your throat so you can deepen your voice to the best of your ability. “Well, Janine, it is slightly colder than average in here. Wouldn’t want you getting hypothermia.”
Melissa frowns, noticing the goosebumps on your skin. “Oh, c'mere, hon, I didn’t realize.” She slips her arm around you and rubs your arms to warm you up.
“Mel,” you rush into her classroom excitedly, barely stopping your momentum from running into her, “she soft launched him!”
Melissa’s brows raise. “I know Gregory’s a twig but there’s no way Janine lifted him and threw him. I call bs.” She shakes her head in disbelief and reaches into her bag for the lunch she brought you.
You smile in thanks and sit at the edge of her desk to eat. “No it’s a dating term, though I wouldn’t underestimate what Janine can do with sheer power of will.” The smell emanating from the tupperware container is so heavenly you have to bite back a moan. “It means she posted him on her Instagram story without his face in it, but I’d know those lanky arms anywhere.”
Melissa frowns around a bite of her own food. “And that’s a…good thing?” She asks uncertainly.
“Yeah it’s the first step in becoming official.” You open the app up on her phone to show her Janine’s story of her holding hands with Gregory. “Once we see a hard launch, we can consider it a success.”
She hands you her phone back. “Show me how to do one of those,” Melissa requests.
“Sure,” you say easily, getting off her desk and leaning in close. “If it was us, we’d have a picture with both of our faces,” you open the camera and smile, capturing a picture, “and if you’re posting it, I would be tagged.” You demonstrate by typing your handle and attaching it to the picture near your face. “And that’s it,” you hand the phone back to her. “All you’d have to do is post it.”
As you hop back onto Melissa’s desk, your phone vibrates with a notification from Instagram. “Like that?” The older teacher asks.
“Yeah like that,” you smile as you double tap your screen. “You look really pretty in that picture, Mel,” you tell her while you type out that exact compliment in the comments under her post.
“Thanks, hon,” she says with a squeeze to your knee. “So do you.” Melissa finishes her lunch and leans back in her chair. “People have started to talk about us, you know.”
“What about us?”
“How we always eat lunch together.” She absently strokes her thumb over your knee. “Alone. And we’re always whispering in the hallways.”
“What?” You laugh hesitantly. “That’s ridiculous. Just because we spend time together at work doesn’t mean we’re… involved .”
Melissa shrugs. “It’s not that ridiculous. We’re trying to get Janine and Gregory together because of the same thing. And we’ve seen each other outside of work.”
Spying on your friends at the movie theater probably shouldn’t count, but it reminds you, “Gregory and I were talking about a farmers’ market that’s this weekend and it’s all about gourmet cheeses. I figured it might be fun if you wanted to go with me?” You’re not sure how he found out about it in the first place since he doesn’t like cheese, but Melissa is the only person you think might be interested anyway.
“Yeah, I’d love to,” she agrees with a soft smile. “It’s a date.”
You thought a bite of food would cover your nerves about asking Melissa to spend time with you, but you didn’t expect her to say that. “A…a date?” You sputter around your coughs.
Melissa smirks, patting your back to help you stop choking. “Yeah, that was the intention, wasn’t it?” It hadn’t been, but her idea is way better than going as friends. Why didn’t you think of that?
“I can’t believe we did it,” Janine squeals behind one of the booths, dressed in all black despite it being mid-afternoon.
“They have absolutely no idea,” Gregory agrees from beside her, wearing an equal amount of black clothing.
They watch intently as you and Melissa sample gourmet cheeses from each booth, holding hands and smiling. “Don’t you just love love?” Janine sighs dreamily.
Gregory slides his pinky across Janine’s, his cheeks turning a darker shade. “I do now.”